Minutes after the Orange County School Board voted this month to close seven half-empty schools, it had to make another seemingly contradictory decision: Choose names for two new schools set to open in August.
The votes underscored the two realities facing Orange County Public Schools.
District and state officials project a steep, nearly 10,000-student decline in traditional public school enrollment in Orange County over the next five years, fueled by lower birth rates, a loss of immigrant students and the increasing popularity of state-funded voucher scholarships for private school and homeschooling services…